Not the Leaf
Know me very long and you are gonna see a picture of a leaf.
Autumn is my favorite photographic season and the changing, colorful, falling, fading leaves are the visual highlight of these months.
It’s late October and we’ve passed through peak leaf season on Oregon’s trees. Some still abound with yellows and oranges, but we’re on the downhill slide. Driving with my son this morning we passed carpeted roadway and sidewalk. Sloping piles thickening up in drifts against curbs and fences away from the lanes of automobile travel. Robust red-browns and burning orange. Their jutting stems angling up like broken bones to litter a battlefield.
This season of color is on its rapid transition to our season of mud. Just days away, hours in some places. Other piles have already gone the brown of fresh mud, their colors sapped away and fibers mulched by tires, rain, and bootsteps.
And this season of my noticing has begun its transition, as well. I look out and up at the trees and light, always. But, now I’m also looking down at what has blown and dropped from branches. These beautiful remnants of life and passing time. Artifacts close enough to discern veins and striations within each leaf. Afternoon light captured in every drop of water.
I don’t have to take the picture. I suppose. But, I’ve slowed and sometimes even stopped. I am there and I am noticing.
That moment is available to us all. You can look and for that moment see. Maybe appreciate the sight or just the pause. Maybe you’ll like what you see and maybe you won’t.
You may suspect my vote would be for appreciating the world and the moments around us. You would probably be right. But, taking the time, giving yourself the time to notice—that is the thing. There is solace in the stillness. Freshness in this breathing space. A harmony when we realize we are here, physical body in a physical world.
It’s the moment, not the leaf.
